Episode 30 - Glitter Space Cult

In 1954, Ruth Nields was introduced to Ernest Norman while they were both attending a psychic event in Los Angeles, California. When they met, Ernest told Ruth that in a past life she had been the daughter of an Egyptian Pharaoh and that she had protected Moses. According to Ruth and Ernest, it was love at first sight they got married the same day that they met, however it’s probably more likely that they didn’t legally get married until two years later in 1956.
Ernest was a self-proclaimed clairvoyant and loved to study the interdimensional science of life and believed that he could channel historical figures and extraterrestrials and communicate with them. Ruth and Ernest knew that his powers shouldn’t be kept a secret, so they decided to start an organization they called Unarius that they ran out of their San Diego home. Unarias stands for Universal Articulate Interdimensional Understanding of Science. Ernest wanted to write books, so he would channel information from intelligent beings and Ruth would type out the messages he was receiving. Ruth said that she learned to type while sleeping. Ernest published over 90 volumes that included “The Infinite Concept of Cosmic Creation” and “Have You Lived On Other Worlds Before? Volume 2” and talked about psychic healing and adventures across the solar system.
Unarias started to gain a following and Ruth and Ernest started to teach their new followers how to channel intelligent beings as well. Ernest and Ruth would tell their followers how they could learn lessons from their spiritual visitors and learn about scientific advancements from other worlds. They would also go into great detail about their past lives. Ruth said that she had lived around 50 lives and had lived millions of years. Jesus and Mary of Bethany were included as some of Ernest and Ruth’s past lives as well as extraterrestrials and archangels.
Ernest and Ruth then began to share the mission of Unarias, which was to save humanity. There was going to be a rapture coming where only a select few that had the right preconditioning and life experience would be chosen to live a greater existence by incarnation in higher worlds.
Ernest died in 1971 from the flu and viral pneumonia, though Unarians don’t believe in death, so they believed that Ernest only transitioned to another world in a different dimension and he would eventually contact them through psychic channels. Ruth Norman was now the sole leader and primary channeler of Unarias. Ruth then said that she had a vision of her marriage to the archangel Michiel on the planet Eros. There was a festival and a sacred temple, beautiful gardens, flowergirls, and trumptes. Archangel Michiel was obviously Ernest in his new form and he crowned Ruth “Queen Uriel, Queen of the Archangels.” Ruth told the Unarians that she was to be called Uriel from now on, which stands for Universal Radiating Infinite Eternal Light.
The Unarians reenacted the marriage between Uriel and Michiel and Uriel’s coronation in a San Diego hotel ballroom. After the wedding, Uriel began to start her work as the new leader and decided to start releasing books of her own. Uriel then authored “Tesla Speaks” which is thirteen volumes of channeled messages from Nicola Tesla, who is obviously a previous reincarnation of Ernest, along with psychic messages from Albert Einstein, Louis Pasteur, William Crookes, and Robert Oppenheimer who all lived on the planet Eros now. In the book, Tesla apparently talks about his relationship with his special pigeon that was white with gray tips on its wings and that Tesla loved that pigeon as a man loves a woman and that the pigeon loved him too. That was just the first volume. The subsequent volumes had messages from different scientists and world leaders, like Isaac Newton and John F. Kennedy and then had messages from supposedly famous beings from other planets like George Adamski and Orfeo Angelucci from planet Venus.
Uriel started to wear extremely extravagant outfits that were covered in glitter and tulle and wore tiaras.

By the way, she’s in her 70’s at this point. But when your Archangel Queen Uriel, you have to dress the part.
On March 17, 1974, Uriel received a message that 32 planets were sending spaceships and would land on Earth in 1975. Uriel and her disciples would pull all-nighters waiting for the Space Brothers to arrive, but 1975 came and went without any alien spaceships landing and that’s when Uriel informed the group that the year of the landing was now 2001 and not 1975. She could tell by the formation of the pink clouds at daybreak that the Space Brothers had tried to land, but humans weren’t ready yet. So the group bought 67 acres for the spaceships to land in the year 2001 on Uriel’s 100th birthday and the landing would usher in a new age of logic and reason. The spaceships would land on top of each other and create a saucer tower which the Space Brothers would use to create a hospital and university on Earth. The saucers would be 5 miles in diameter each and each saucer would have 1,000 scientists that would work on the betterment of humankind. Each level of the saucer tower would be dedicated to a different science and the university would recreate the computers of Atlantic and Lemuria.
In 1975, Uriel sold her home and used the money to buy a building where the Unarians could start to hold group meetings. They obviously decorated it as sparkly as possible and Uriel had a gold-colored throne that was decorated with peacock feathers. Uriel then announced that she was opening the Academy of Parapsychology, Healing, and Psychic Science which soon after became known as the Unarias Academy of Science where students could receive past-life therapy and the true art of healing. By 1979, the Unarians claimed a following of over 100,000 members. That same year, Uriel made an announcement that she wasn’t an archangel any more, but had been promoted to Lord of the Universe and Prince of the Realm.
By 1986, the Unarias Academy of Science had around 450 regular students and were charged $5 for each class. Uriel had also had her teachings recorded in about 80 books by this time, so she figured it was time to move on to film. The group started filming what they called “mini-documentaries” which were these short psychodramas where members would basically be dressed up and put in a scene and they were supposed to act out their past lives unscripted. Some of the films were set in ancient civilizations while others took place on other planets and some were just a mix of the two like spaceships showing up with Uriel aboard and visiting cavemen. The Unarians believed that these performances were important for the students or actors to heal from their karmic damage of the past and move on with their lives unhindered by old baggage.
These weren’t cheap films either, the scenes and costumes were extremely elaborate and of course, Uriel’s costumes were the most elaborate of all. She wore big glittery gowns and different colored wigs with tall sparkly tiaras. Over 200 films were made along with 80 public access television shows. In one film, a man wearing a loin cloth is visited by Uriel in her rainbow sparkly spaceship. He comes aboard and she tells him “I am light, I am wisdom, I am your future. Come with me through this tunnel of stars!” In another film, Uriel is sailing around in a big swan boat and she is dressed in white feathers and a star shaped tiara. Unarius began to get even more attention and Uriel even started to become a minor celebrity in the U.S., even being invited as a guest on the David Letterman Show.
Uriel often carried a golden scepter with her and drove a ’69 Cadillac Coup De’ville that had a UFO saucer mounted on the roof that sometimes open to release a flock of white doves and “Welcome Your Space Brothers” was written on the side.
Astronomer Carl Sagan, who once got NASA to spend a billion dollars on a satellite with drawings of a man and woman on it in case it made contact with aliens, called Unarius and said “If you guys are really channeling the eternal wisdom, then once and for all, prove Fermat’s Theorem.” (Pierre Fermat was a 17

th century mathematician who died without revealing the proof of one of his theorems and scientists haven’t been able to come up with a proof even today.) The Unarians channeled their Space Brothers who sent the answer. The Unarians transcribed the answer and sent it to Sagan, except that it was still in metaphysical words and not a mathematical formula. When Sagan asked to get the answer put into mathematical terms, the Unarians responded that they weren’t mathematicians, so they couldn’t do that and that if Sagan would just let his ego defenses go, he would be able to figure it out.
The Unarians continued to grow and expand their base and the school kept teaching classes. They also kept making films which also included drag queens and a lot of blackface. Unsurprisingly, a glittery theater cult attracted a lot of confused gay men. Uriel often took young gay men under her wing and kept them as her close companions despite her teachings that homosexuality was a cosmic abnormality and that it was karma’s way to punish you for being bad in a past life. However, Uriel loved having gay men around that could create costumes for her and do her makeup and hair and even had romantic interests in them.
Stephan Yancoskie had been wandering around the West Coast, trying to come to grips with his sexuality when he met Uriel. He said “She looked at me and told me I was home at last. I was overwhelmed. I ate it up.” Stephan quickly rose in the group and was then dubbed “Arieson, leader of the ascended Aryan peoples”. Stephan would teach classes at the academy, paint murals on the building, organized UFO pageants, and often acted in the mini-documentaries. Stephan said “Unarius allowed me to explore my creativity in ways that I would never have otherwise accomplished. I’ll probably never again have dozens of people at my beck and call to do what I tell them. In retrospect, I really appreciated the opportunity.”
Stephan left the Unarians the first time after he and Uriel got into a fight and she took off her tiara and started hitting him with it and said “Here! If you want to be the Archangel Uriel, wear the crown! Be the Archangel Uriel!” He came back after a short time and things were good again until it was found out that he was sleeping with one of the other members. Uriel called Stephan a slut, so he left. He decided to write her a letter and hand deliver it to Uriel so that he could have closure. When he walked in, Uriel proposed that they get married. She already had at least a dozen wedding dresses in her closet. Stephan said no and left even with her chasing him out to his car.
Uriel then wrote the book titled “Thwarted” which was all about the evil doings of a recently expelled Unarian member and the book claims that Stephan had hypnotized other Unarians with lower astral forces and that he had previously been a female named Shimlus on the planet Tyron where he had kept all the citizens robotized. There were claims in the book from other Unarian students that Stephan had been evil, which they probably said just to stay in Uriel’s good graces. Quotes from other Unarians at time include “Uriel is extremely humble and says that even though she is an archangel, she is only looking through a door at the Infinite. We don’t look at her like a God, idolize her. She is just much further evolved than we are and it is possible that we might be able to attain her great wisdom in future lifetimes if we adhere to the Principles.” And “They have tried to knock Ruth Norman off her pedestal or bow down to her, just like they have done to Jesus…Uriel lives in more dimensions and is beyond the realm of human understanding.”
Many followers were obsessed with Uriel. Some would cry when they finally got to meet her and some even fainted when she would touch them. There were several portraits painted of her and there is one painting that is believed to have healing powers. Followers believed that Uriel could heal them in their dreams and many would report that she came to them in a vision. Several members declined cancer treatment because they believed that Uriel would heal them.
In 1988, Uriel broke her hip and took a little break from leading the group. In February of 1989, she

returned to lead services, but her health started to make a sharp turn for the worse which she blamed on Unarians not being truthful about crimes they committed in their past lives. She lost most of her hearing and was in chronic pain, so she was admitted to a hospital in December of 1989 but still made it most events held by the group. By 1991, Uriel was completely bedridden and was being taken care of by a select few group members. Despite being a decade shy of the 2001 date of the Space Brothers landing and her turning 100, Uriel let the group know that the Space Brothers had told her that she had completed her mission and that she had permission to leave her body at any time.
Uriel continued to meet with several of her followers and lived until July 12, 1993. Her body was cremated and group members were instructed to not grieve her death because her celestial body was still alive and well. A member named Antares took over as leader of the group and channeled messages from Uriel and relayed them to the group. When Antares died in 1999, a board of directors was created and took over leadership and channeling Uriel. The Unarians are still going strong today. Past Life Therapy classes are offered twice a week at their teaching center and can be streamed online. They also offer workshops in Los Angeles and often visit New Age expos. They also still release doves from the UFO that’s on top of the 69 Cadillac Coup d’Ville every year for the Interplanetary Concave of Light.
Sources:
“We Are Not Alone” Short Documentary directed by Jodi Wille
“The Gods Have Landed: New Religions From Other Worlds” by George R Kirkpatrick and Diana Tumminia
“The Latter Days of El Cajon’s Unarius” by Adam Parfrey
“Uriel, The Universe’s Best-Dressed Spiritual Leader” by Marie Lodi
“A Pilgrimage to Unarius, From Public Access Television to Other Dimensions” by Claire L. Evans
“We Are Not Alone: Unarians Celebrate a Message From Outer Space” by Peter Gilstrap